


Coming Undone

by willowoftheriver



Series: only when i hit the ground [1]
Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse), Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dream Sex, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Infertility, M/M, Medical Inaccuracies, Mild Gore, Obsession, Past Relationship(s), Prequel, Recovery, Revenge, Serious Injuries, Sibling Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-10
Updated: 2015-02-09
Packaged: 2017-12-23 00:15:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/919719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willowoftheriver/pseuds/willowoftheriver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris thought he was going to die when he threw himself at Wesker and they fell through the window. Unfortunately, Wesker made sure that he didn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. My Brain's Ticking Like A Bomb

**Author's Note:**

> So, it's the prequel to Pet, which I was asked to do by one of the lovelies over on ff.net. Um . . . expect angst. Ocean fulls of angst. And medical inaccuracies, and canon bent at will to suit my horrible purposes.
> 
> Ahem. But, beyond that, I hope you enjoy! I've also been thinking about maybe doing a sequel, but at this point it'd just be like a series of one shots about the survivors of the detonation with no real central plot and not much going on, so that's still really iffy.

Eight years.

Ninety six months, four hundred and sixteen weeks, two thousand nine hundred and twenty one days.

Chris had counted as they had passed him slowly by, kept track of all the long days of obsessive work, of the restless nights spent dreaming, always dreaming.

It had been eight years since the Spencer Mansion had been destroyed, but Chris Redfield had never really  _left_. He was still there, in his mind, always there, trapped and choking.

It was so ironic, then, that this had happened where it had, in a real life imitation of his prison.

He hadn't even needed a map to navigate the halls. Foyer,  _did you hear that gunshot,_  staircase,  _I'll go check it out,_ hallway,  _Chris, please be careful,_  dining room,  _does this remind you of Raccoon City?_

_In ways you can't even imagine, Jill._

"Can you believe it's been eight years since then?" Jill had asked, her voice crackling over the headset as he stood there on the balcony, tensed and ready for danger, for whatever had butchered Spencer's security force.

"No, Jill," he had replied, his eyes wandering to the blood smeared along the walls, the corpses lying sprawled over each other on the floor, arms and legs and necks twisted in unnatural positions.

Had it only been eight years? Not longer? Had it only been eight years of the nightmares and the flashbacks, the mood swings and depression?

Only eight years of flinching at the sight of men with blond hair, of his stomaching turning whenever his brother-in-law decided that reddish brown wasn't good enough and dyed it?

_No, I can't believe its been that long. You're right, we're both getting older._

A forced laugh, a forced smile, strong, strong Chris, that was who he was, what he was. Unbreakable, experienced Agent Redfield, the leader, the survivor.

Survived the Mansion, survived the Ashfords and the Tyrant and the zombies and the Hunters, survived the horror and the nightmare, the living nightmare that he had never surfaced from--

He had lived through all of it but maybe, maybe he shouldn't have. Maybe those eight years had been borrowed time, extra life bought for him by Wesker during that blind, wild run through the forest when he should've died at the fangs of the Cerberus that had lunged for him.

Borrowed time. That was all he was running on, but now, some part of him felt that Wesker would be taking it back soon.

It hurt to see him, like it always did. He stood there facing the sprawling window in the back of the room, nothing in his stance suggesting he was in any way affected by the fact that Oswell Spencer lay dead only a few feet away from him, a ragged hole in his chest, or that one of his gloved hands was dripping blood.

Eight years ago, Chris never would've imagined that the Wesker he knew could be capable of such brutality, and some part of him wished desperately he never would've come to find out.

_Borrowed time, time I didn't want, not if it meant this, not this--_

"Wesker," Jill spat, her pretty face contorted into an expression of pure hatred.  _Oh, Jill, if only you really knew . . ._

"Jill," he replied, finally turning to face them. Immediately, his lips pulled together into a small smirk. "Chris . . ."

He always hissed his name with a lecherous undertone, drawing out the final syllable as though he was rolling it over his tongue, tasting it.

It was such a small thing, but it made Chris feel filthy, long lost sensations prickling at his skin.

That was why he fired first, the jerk of the gun in his hands forcing away the phantom touches.

The bullet didn't hit its target, despite having been accurately aimed; Wesker dodged to the side, his body becoming nothing more than a blur as Chris followed up with round after round.

Jill joined in, though her eyes had widened fractionally. Chris knew what she must be feeling, what he had felt the first time he had seen him move so quickly--surprise, shock, disgust,  _how can something that had once been human be so unnatural?_

They kept moving and firing, even trying to anticipate where he would end up after dodging and aim there, but nothing worked. The finely crafted walls and bookcases became pockmarked with bullet holes and their guns eventually clicked empty, falling to the floor as useless pieces of metal.

Both Chris and Jill were proficient in hand-to-hand combat, but it was entirely useless here. Wesker outmaneuvered and overpowered both of them, one swing of his hand sending Chris flying through the air into one of the bookcases, where he slid limply down to the floor, his head spinning.

_Get up, get up, get up--_

_\--_ but his arms and legs didn't want to obey him, all four limbs seemingly stunned out of functioning for an instant--

\-- _get up get up--_

\--and an instant was all it took for Wesker to get Jill up by the neck, his hand tightening around her throat as he spoke to her--

\-- _get up--_

\--she was struggling, gagging, going limp, Wesker's fist was pulling back, his bloody fist that had killed Spencer only moments before--

_\--get up_ _**now--** _

He pushed up and off the bookcase, vertigo almost making him stumble as he staggered forward, but he forced his legs to work, to gain speed, because now there was only one thing that he could do--

He slammed into Wesker with as much force as he could, the momentum behind his body forcing both of them forward and into the window, the frail glass window that shattered instantly and sent them both spiraling out of control into the dark abyss below.

And as he fell, the body pressed against his the only thing to hold, he was struck with the thought that he was glad he was going to die with Wesker.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of the story and the chapter both come from the song "Coming Undone" by Korn, to continue my tradition of naming every single thing I write after music. No, I don't know how that started.


	2. My Heart Keeps Beating Like A Hammer

Snapping his broken arm back into place and taking a deep breath as his body began to right itself, Albert Wesker stared down at the twisted, bloody form on the ground before him and thought about how  _easy_ it would be to just watch him die.

He was half gone as it was, his frail human body broken and mangled from the impact. Wesker could imagine what was happening inside of him, the chaos his body must've been in as his damaged organs began bleeding and malfunctioning, struggling frantically to work until they eventually gave out under the strain.

It was practically inevitable at this point, even somewhat amazing that it hadn't already happened, that the impact hadn't finished him immediately.

 _It's not the fall that kills you, not the sudden stop, just the bone-shattering_ **collision** \--

Chris's life was so very close to ending, each of his ragged, wet inhalations only drawing his agony out. Wesker could tell that he was struggling, fighting with what little strength he had left to just keep his heart beating, to  _live._  He was so unlike Spencer, who hadn't even hit the ground before the dim light had faded from his eyes.

Chris had always been so determined, so unwilling to give up, lose hope, even in the most desperate situations. It was almost like he thrived on challenge, the best part of him coming out to play only when he was up against impossible odds.

Did he think, somewhere in his pain-fogged mind, that Valentine would be along shortly to save him? That she would find a hospital somewhere out in this nowhere and that he would be able to survive?

He would die before she even made it back to the foyer of the Mansion.

Chris Redfield, dying. Wesker hadn't ever honestly thought he would see the day.

It was true to say that Redfield had been a thorn in his side for years, an irritating presence that seemed to haunt his every step and disrupt his plans. It was even true to say that Wesker hated him, but that was tempered by something else, some feeling he couldn't quite place or pin down.

Chris was his . . . enemy, his nemesis, his opponent, his  _lover_ —

Chris was simply . . .  _his_. They were twisted into one another, two sides of the same coin, their fates inevitably intertwined no matter how far apart they were.

Chris had fought this truth, of course, rebelled against it and denied it and rejected it, rejected  _Wesker_.

But he couldn't, not anymore, not when he was alone and dying and at Wesker's mercy.

_Do you want to live, Chris? Do you want me to save you? Or would you rather die, just to spite me?_

Chris couldn't answer, even if he had actually vocalized the questions. He was only capable of bloody, unintelligible gurgles, his blue eyes wide and only vaguely aware as they stared up at him.

Wesker could imagine them empty, glassy, all the emotion that he could read in them vanished along with Chris's heartbeat.

He could imagine Chris rotting, his corpse deteriorating away until he resembled a T-Virus carrier, bones and organs exposed as he laid cold in a coffin.

Wesker could even picture a future without Chris in it, without that constant presence he had become so accustomed to. He could picture a graveyard and a headstone, and himself reading the epitaph.

— _Christopher Redfield, 1973 – 2006—_

_Would you like to die, Christopher? Or would you rather live, live for_ _**me** _ _?_

"I think," he said quietly, his hand pressing gently against the other's mangled face and his lips brushing so closely that he could taste the blood, "it's time to introduce you to my world, Christopher."

All Chris managed before he slipped into unconsciousness were more bloody gurgles, but to Wesker, they sounded something like screams.

.

It was raining by the time Jill Valentine burst through the foyer's front doors, out of breath and limping. She staggered over the porch and down the stairs, tripping on the last step and slamming into the pavement below. Her exposed fingers scraped against the wet pathway painfully, but she didn't even pause before she was back up on her feet and running again, adrenaline pushing her forward.

She turned, her eyes darting frantically over the building even as she tried to make some kind of mental map from what she had seen of the interior. It was so like the Spencer Mansion in Raccoon City, but the path she and Chris had taken to arrive at the library had been disorienting; she had no idea where it was in relation to the outside.

"Eagle Six! Eagle Six, do you copy?!"

Jill fumbled with her radio, even as she took off again, picking a side and sprinting towards it, her eyes still focused on the windows.

"We're almost at your position! ETA is five minutes! What, exactly, happened to your partner? What should we expect? What about the subject?"

There were so many of them, all over the walls, both big and small, and somehow, in her cold, choking panic, she just  _couldn't_  form a mental image of the exact shape of the one she was looking for. The darkness, and the light shining from within the building, even made it difficult to determine if they were broken or not.

"Wesker—Albert Wesker was on the premises—" she began, her words rushed. She was hardly even aware of what she was saying, like the sentences were forming from a part of her brain set to autopilot. "He murdered Spencer, Spencer's dead, he was waiting for us, fight—we fought, but he was too fast, he was so fast and, and strong, we couldn't win, we—he—there was a window, a big window in the back of the room and they—they—oh my God, it was such a long fall—and, and I can't  _find_ him!"

"Is Wesker still alive? Is he still a threat?"

" _I don't know_!"

Window, window, window, window, so many of them, all over, but there was no Chris to be found, which meant he was still out there somewhere, alone and bleeding and _dying_ —

"Valentine, remain where you are—"

"I have to find him!"

Chris was her best friend, her partner, her—her  _brother_. They had survived so much together, so much—this just couldn't be happening, not like this. Ten years wasn't supposed to end in an instant.

"Chris!" she screamed, but the sound of her voice faded away into the night with no response. "Chris! Please!"

"ETA is three minutes, Eagle Six, just hold on—"

Jill hurt. She was tired, and injured, and the feel of Wesker's hands around her neck had yet to fade, but she pushed herself harder, her feet blurs as she ran as fast as she ever had, even faster than she had through the Raccoon Forest that night eight years ago, faster than when the Nemesis had chased her though the destroyed city streets, the word S.T.A.R.S. falling over and over again from his mouth—

Nothing mattered, not her body or her orders--just Chris.

"The Mansion is in sight, we're setting down, what is your location--?"

Everything looked the same, dirt and rocks and steep slopes that she stumbled down, tripping over her own heavy legs; she had no idea where she was or how far she'd gone--

Something crunched under Jill's foot, the sound managing to rip through the haze in her mind and shatter the silent night. Her head snapping down, she lifted her foot and found that she was standing at the edge of a wide area of rocky, flat ground covered with broken glass.

Immediately, her head turned up, her eyes seeking out the glaring light that shone down through a destroyed window high above.

"Chris!" she shrieked, scanning wildly for any sign of him and growing more and more desperate as each second ticked by. For some reason, she couldn't  _find_  him, even though there were no bushes or trees, no large rocks—there wasn't even that much ground, because, because—

Jill stared at the shoreline, time seeming to still for one suffocating moment. Nausea welled up in her, pins pricking behind her eyes.

"No . . ."

Numbly, she staggered forward, finally collapsing to her knees beside the twisted pair of sunglasses that laid in the wet dirt, trembling precariously each time the water rushed up to brush them.

The sea adjacent to the cliff where the Spencer family home sat was very deep, Jill knew, and very tumultuous—the currents were strong and the waves large, powerful, _dangerous_.

An injured man wouldn't have had a chance.

"No," she repeated, even as tears began running down her face. "No . . . Chris . . . Chris . . .  _why_?"

_Why did you have to die for me, Chris? Why did you have to leave me alone?_

_Why, Chris?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back when I wrote this chapter it went through about twenty drafts and there were many angsty texts to my friends about how much trouble I was having with it to the point that they got annoyed. And yet, after all of that, this is all I've got. *sigh*
> 
> The chapter title comes from the song "Help I'm Alive" by Metric.


	3. Say It's Just A Nightmare

Night had made it seem like a bad dream.

_It was just a nightmare_ , she could’ve convinced herself, even as she’d watched the team of BSAA Agents scour the area, flashlights out and guns drawn. _The Spencer Mansion is long gone, nothing like it exists anymore, and Wesker is dead, too, no matter what Chris says he saw on Rockfort Island—Wesker died a traitor, a spy, a_ human _, not a_ thing _that can move like a blur and crush a neck with one hand._

_There was no window,_ she could’ve convinced herself as she stood there, the warm darkness protecting her from any form of acceptance. _It never happened, because it was just a nightmare. And tomorrow, I’m going to wake up and everything will be all right again._

But when Jill awoke the next day, she wasn’t in her room at home, or anywhere she recognized. She was in a hospital bed, bandages wrapped around her injuries and an IV pumping water and medication into her body.

And in the glaring light of day, she had to admit that it had actually happened. There was no denying that Chris was most likely dead, from impact or drowning or bleeding, and no matter how much she wished she could just close her eyes and make it all go away, that was impossible, not with the pain in her own body to remind her of the fight, or the watchful eyes of her commanding officer on her.

“We need a debriefing, Agent Valentine,” he said, almost as soon as he stepped through the door into her room. “We need to know everything that happened last night, blow by blow.”

“I told you over the radio,” she rasped, swallowing convulsively. She wanted to be alone, so she could cry, but she couldn’t tell him to leave.

“You _summarized,_ ” he said, “very quickly, and unclearly. That is unacceptable when the events in question result in the death of an agent.”

_Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry—_

“He is . . . dead, then?” she asked, her voice thick.

“We haven’t found any bodies, but from the height of the fall and the proximity to the water, we’re working under the assumption that both of them are dead.” He hesitated, blue eyes softening. “I . . . am sorry, Valentine. I realize that you and Agent Redfield were . . . _close_ . . .”

“We’ve known each other for—for ten years, we were in Raccoon City together, at the—the Mansion—” Her voice cracked on the last word, despite a conscious struggle to keep it steady.

She stopped, composing herself as best as she could, and finally said: “He was my friend.”

He nodded in understanding, though seemed to be waiting for her to continue.

She took a deep breath, trying to find some kind of center. _Do. Not. Cry._

“We entered the Estate without incident; from the outside, everything seemed calm, almost oddly so—there were no guards, or dogs. However, inside, we found pools of blood and the bodies of members of Spencer’s security team. We couldn’t tell how, exactly, they had been killed but there seemed to have been a large amount of violence involved.

“The adjoining rooms were all empty, but there were signs of someone having recently been there—a fire burning in a fireplace, for instance. At one point, we even heard a piano on the second floor play, but by the time we arrived in the room no one was there.

“The building was . . . very similar . . . in design to the Spencer Mansion from Raccoon City. The floor plans were close, and some of the rooms contained puzzles and traps to prevent an intruder from progressing. However, we were able to open a gate leading into the Estate’s basement. We found . . . prison cells, cages, dead test subjects . . .”

“We have teams searching every inch of the building,” he said, nodding. “We’ve found what you’re describing.”

“This was also where we were first attacked . . . I’d never seen that type of BOW before. Like a . . . human with a sac on its back, carrying an anchor . . . there were quite a few of them, but we killed all of them. At one point we were unarmed, we’d fallen through a weak floor into a flooded area . . . that’s where we found a ladder, leading back up into the Mansion itself. We found more dead security guards, pulled handguns off of them to use . . . and that . . . that . . .”

The feeling of dread that had welled up in her as they’d approached the double doors at the end of the hallway was something she had only ever felt once before, during Raccoon City. The agony in her shoulder, spreading down and through her body, the hungry whispers in her blood as she laid there on the altar in the chapel, praying to a god that she didn’t believe in anymore that Carlos would be back soon, that she wouldn’t become one of _them_ . . .

She should’ve listened to her instincts. She should’ve said something. They never should’ve opened those doors . . .

“There was a library, at the end of the hall. Inside we found Oswell Spencer lying dead on the floor and—and Wesker standing by the . . . window . . . in the back of the room. We fought, but he was . . . _fast_. Our guns didn’t work, because he could dodge the bullets. Chris had—Chris had told me about what he saw on Rockfort Island, in Antarctica, but I hadn’t imagined the extent of it, that anything human could really be like that. But . . . Wesker isn’t human, not anymore. I finally . . . finally _understand . . ._

“He . . . was able to knock Chris to the side, back against one of the bookcases. Then he grabbed me by the neck—we were . . . in front of the window. He said something to me, I don’t remember what, but he paused, he didn’t see Chris coming, neither did I. And then, then they were just . . .”

Her stomach rolled, sickness inching its way up her throat as her head spun at the remembrance, the emotions rushing back to her. She had fallen to the floor, broken glass cutting into her palms, and then in the next instant she had _realized_ . . .

“They were just gone,” she choked out. “Gone.”

\--

Dan DeChant took a deep breath, though he disliked the vaguely salty tang the cold, harsh air carried.

The beach he stood on wasn’t a nice one, not the type that Florida and California loved to include in their tourism commercials; it was more like something from New England, a desolate, rocky sealine with rolling grey water.

Technically, he wasn’t even sure if it could be labeled a ‘beach’ at all—rather, it was simply the narrow stretch of land that ran between the water and the foundation of the Mansion. Comprised almost entirely of dirt and rock with some sparse grass mixed in, there was nothing to be seen on it except large pieces of broken glass glinting sharply in the midday sun. Some of those shards had bloodstains on them, the last remnants of a man he knew he was never going to see again.

He’d had great respect for Chris Redfield, despite the man being considerably younger than him—the sheer amount he had survived and endured, and his burning determination to eradicate bioterrorism were both truly admirable.

DeChant never would’ve been able to anticipate that one day he’d be here, watching as divers jumped off of boats into the unfriendly waters on the slim chance they might be able to recover his body.

So far, they had had no luck in finding either of them—Chris or the scum that had killed him—and DeChant’s shift was drawing to a close. He’d been one of the first on the scene in the early hours of the morning, and it was getting time for a fresh team to come in.

Sighing heavily, DeChant spared one last look at the dull grey water and silently bid his friend goodbye.

\--

It was the fifth negative in a row, and Claire was beginning to think something was wrong with her, to acknowledge the dark speculation that occasionally forced its way into her head as she laid awake at night.

After all, there was no shortage of things that could’ve had an effect on her over the years: injuries, overuse of Umbrella Corporation First Aid Sprays, slogging through sewer water, Nosferatu’s poison, even just being around so many viral outbreaks and BOWs—god only knew what might’ve been in the air she breathed or on the things she touched.

Maybe one, or a combination of many, of those things had resulted in some type of infertility? Maybe she didn’t ovulate properly anymore, or there was some problem with her eggs or uterus?

What other explanation except for a fertility problem could there be for eight months of trying for a pregnancy with no results?

Claire had always loved children, even when she had been young herself—she’d been the best babysitter in the neighborhood she and Chris had grown up in, always enjoying sitting and watching the children play, and even in Raccoon City, she had forced herself through the worst situations just so she could see Sherry again, make sure the little girl was safe and uninjured.

Naturally, she wanted to be a mother herself, to experience pregnancy and watch her own children grow.

But, as she stared at the test on the counter, at the little red line that meant ‘negative’, she finally let herself stop denying that there was a problem.

Swallowing thickly, she threw the test away, washed her hands, and stepped out of the bathroom into the bedroom. She dressed quickly, slipping out of her pajamas and into a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, and looked briefly to her laptop. She had a report to write for TerraSave, one that was dangerously close to being overdue, but she just couldn’t muster up enough enthusiasm to work on it.

Besides, Chris would be back today—he’d promised her he’d spend the day with her working on their motorcycles in her garage, what with hers having started making a weird sound she couldn’t find the source of. And considering how busy they both usually were, she couldn’t let anything get in the way of what little time they were able to spend together.

Reaching across the back of her swivel chair, Claire carefully shut the laptop and turned on her heels, headed downstairs to the kitchen.

As she entered, she paused to watch amusedly as Leon struggled with the stove, adjusting the burners’ heat with one hand while his other gripped the handle of a skillet. Inside, something lumpy and overly greased crackled warningly for several seconds before actually bursting into flame, forcing him to quickly pat it out with a dishtowel.

“You know,” she said loudly, startling him. “I’ve heard of oil fires in the kitchen but I always thought it would take an amazing amount of incompetence to actually start one . . .”

“Very funny,” he deadpanned, carefully removing the towel and looking at what remained of the food. It was now charred beyond any edibility it might’ve once had.

“Eggs?” he offered, gingerly holding the skillet out in front of him.

Claire rolled her eyes, turning and grabbing her car keys off the counter. “Throw them away. We’ll go get something more . . . _professionally_ done. Then we have to go to BSAA Headquarters—Chris should be getting back from his mission today.”

Leon tipped the skillet over the garbage can, the eggs slowly ungluing themselves from it and falling inside with a splat. “Hopefully they will’ve found that old bastard.”

“Hopefully . . . though, Spencer’s so slimy—the type that seems to be able to slip away no matter how quickly you get there. God only knows how he escaped in 2003 . . .”

“If anyone can bring him down it’d be your brother,” he assured her, throwing the skillet carelessly into the sink and grabbing his jacket.

“Yeah,” she agreed, smiling at the thought. “Yeah, he would be . . .”

\--

Over breakfast, Claire wasn’t really sure how to broach the subject, always waiting for a lull in the conversation or an opening but never taking the opportunity when it arrived.

She and Leon had married last year, after the Harvardville Incident. Their relationship had always been on and off before that, work preventing it from becoming too serious. That hadn’t, however, changed her feelings for him—what had begun as a kind of infatuation with the handsome cop she’d been forced into surviving a crisis with Raccoon City had gradually evolved into something deeper, love, but she’d never really known what _he_ felt.

She had, of course, been aware that he carried a torch for some woman he’d met during the outbreak, someone he called ‘Ada’. On one of the few occasions he’d talked about her, he’d told Claire that she hadn’t made it out of Raccoon City alive, but it was clear he still had strong feelings for her.

It was something about his voice when he talked about her, the look on his face, that made Claire cautious, always careful to keep the extent of her emotions hidden. But then there had been the mission to Spain, the wounds covering his body and the realization that he had faced death again and again—she’d almost cracked that night, opened her mouth and told him, but in the end, she’d kept quiet until after Harvardville.

He’d looked at Angela Miller with a variation of the expression he wore when he talked about Ada—it hadn’t been anywhere near as intense, but Claire had been able to imagine it becoming so, imagine Angela becoming a live replacement of the woman long lost in Raccoon City.

So Claire had finally told him, finally said those three little words—I. Love. You.

And he had said them back.

Now here they were, Claire yet again hesitant to speak up.

She knew Leon was aware she wasn’t on birth control anymore, that there was a possibility they would be having a baby soon, but she wasn’t sure how intensely he wanted a family, how far he would go to get one.

Fertility doctors, from what she knew, were expensive; their tests were invasive and embarrassing, and sometimes things were drawn out for months or years before it worked.

Taking a long drink of water, Claire cleared her throat and decided to simply jump in.

“I took another pregnancy test this morning,” she began, and he looked up at her sharply.

“It was negative,” she added quickly. “Like . . . all the others.”

It hurt when he couldn’t hide the look of relief in his eyes, and so she turned back to her breakfast, everything else she wanted to say forgotten.

\--

Carlos Oliveira was an outgoing, flirtatious man that Claire didn’t really know what to make of, even after several years of being acquainted with him. He was quite skilled, from what she knew—proficient with weapons, a former mercenary, even once a member of the Umbrella Biohazard Countermeasure Service. The last had ultimately led him to Raccoon City during the thick of the outbreak, where he had met Jill Valentine.

It was his relationship with her that puzzled Claire more than anything—for the most part, they seemed just like very close friends, sharing a type of bond that could only be created by facing death together over and over again. But then, occasionally, one of them would say something or do something that would make her wonder whether there was something more going on, whether they were involved on a deeper level.

It was an ongoing mystery that she couldn’t solve, though personally, Claire hoped they were just friends. She had always thought that Jill was the perfect match for Chris—she seemed to balance him in every way, thus their effective partnership. They had known each other for ten years, survived countless missions together and built an enduring friendship—wasn’t romance just the next natural step?

But Chris just didn’t seem to be interested in _anyone_ , no matter how much she tried to encourage him. All he cared about was work, accepting one mission after the next with hardly any time for himself in between them.

She could see why Jill would get impatient and find someone else, even if she didn’t look forward to the day Chris would finally come around and see what he missed.

But, as she walked across the bustling lobby of BSAA Headquarters to where Carlos was standing, she felt as though that day was very far off.

“The lovely Miss Redfield,” he greeted, looking her up and down. “It’s been awhile since I last saw you! A year, at least! And you seem to get more beautiful each time!”

“It’s ‘Mrs. Kennedy’ now,” said Leon. His hand fell heavily onto her shoulder.

Carlos’s eyes widened, his smile widening. “You finally tied the knot? I’m so happy for you two!”

That was something she liked about Carlos—he was so genuine and cheerful, somehow able to be lighthearted in almost any situation. He didn’t hide anything, either, his emotions always freely playing out over his face.

“Thank you, Carlos,” she said, reaching up and grabbing Leon’s hand. “We’re happy, too.”

Carlos shook his head, even as he glanced up at a large wall clock hanging over the main reception desk. “Almost twelve thirty—I was going to go meet Jill and Chris on the helipad. Had to cut my lunch short.” He grumbled the last, holding up a crumpled brown bag she recognized as being from the fast food restaurant closest to Headquarters. “You don’t mind if I eat on the way, do you?”

“It’s fine,” she said, and they set off through the building’s veritable maze of hallways. Carlos pulled a cheeseburger out of the bag and began eating, taking bites in between conversation about what they’d been doing in the year they hadn’t seen each other.

The food was entirely gone by the time they stepped onto the helipad, which was deafeningly loud with the noise of a helicopter coming in for a landing.

“Just on time!” said Carlos, rumpling up the bag and stuffing it into one of the deep pockets of his cargo pants.

Claire watched as the helicopter gently set down, its propellers slowing as it began the process of shutting off. A door on the side slid open and Jill stepped out, her movements slightly stiff. Claire noticed that one of her hands was wrapped in a bandage.

“Jill!” Carlos greeted loudly, waving.

Jill’s eyes snapped up and focused on them, but the look on her bruised face was anything but happy.

Carlos noticed this, his smile fading rapidly. “Jill?”

Claire realized her own expression must’ve been changing as well, reflecting the confusion she felt when she realized Jill had been the _only_ passenger in the helicopter.

“What happened on the mission?” Carlos asked as Jill slowly made her way over to them, her gait unsteady. “Did you . . . find Spencer?”

“Yes,” she replied, very quietly.

Carlos was now frowning, the first time Claire had ever seen him do that. “Then is he . . . here, somewhere? Still in Europe? In custody, at least?”

“No.” Her voice was monotone, her gaze now on the floor. “No, he’s . . . dead. When we arrived, he was . . . already dead.”

“‘Already dead’?” Leon repeated incredulously. “How?”

Jill was silent, tense, the question seemingly forcing her to pull herself together before she could provide an answer to it.

“Wesker killed him,” she finally said, her eyes shifting up and away from the concrete to Claire. “I’m . . . _so_ sorry, Claire.”

She stared at the woman, and she _knew_. She _knew_ what she meant, why Chris wasn’t there, but she didn’t, _couldn’t_ , accept it.

“Where’s Chris?” she demanded, panic in her voice. “Where is he?! Where is my brother?!”

“Claire—”

“Why isn’t he here?!”

“Claire,” she said forcefully, grabbing one of the woman’s hands and gripping it tightly. “He’s dead.”

“No . . . _no_ . . .”

“Wesker—Wesker killed him, Claire. It all happened so fast—”

“No!” she shrieked, ripping her hand away. “No, that’s not, that can’t, it—”

“He was too strong, like a Tyrant, there was nothing we could do, we were outmatched—”

“No!” It was the only thing she could do, again and again—deny it, deny it and make it so it’s not true—

But Jill kept talking, kept forcing her to listen—

“We were in a library, there was a window, a wall-sized window, it—”

_No, no, no, no no no no NO_

“—broke and they—they fell—”

_It wasn’t true, Chris always survived no matter what, Wesker had never been able to kill him, never never never—_

“—water right below, we’ve been searching for the bodies but—”

_Bodies, corpses, dead dead dead, Chris wasn’t dead—_

“—can’t find them, they think they were washed away—”

_Washed away, gone, Chris was. not. gone, he’d **promised** her that he would always be there—_

“Claire . . . he’s dead.”

The words hung in the air like a physical thing, halting all of Claire’s racing thoughts as her world began to shift and sway, things becoming hazy.

_He’s dead._

_Dead._

_Chris is dead._

Wesker killed him, he fell out of a window, he hit the water, we can’t find the body—all of it meant the same thing:

Chris was gone, forever, and she was never going to see him again.

There was no way to deny it, no way to change it or make it go away, no matter what she said or did.

So as she collapsed to the ground into a sobbing mess, her face in her hands and her knees to her chest, she couldn’t even manage another ‘no’.

\--

Chris dreamed that he was running.

He was going as fast as he could, feet flying across the overgrown ground, the tips of tree branches slicing at his face. The air buzzed around him, his own heartbeat pounding in his ears, and for some reason, he was _afraid_.

He didn’t know what of, what it was, but only that no matter how quickly he ran, he couldn’t seem to escape it. It gained and gained until it was on him, surrounding him, bright white light and coldness and voices—

_“—injures are too extensive, he has almost no chance of survival—”_

_“—then perhaps you should take into consideration, Doctor, that his survival is tantamount to your own—”_

—and there was a voice that he recognized, loved and feared and hated, wanted to run to and hide from at the same time. It was here in this dark dream with him, pulling him up and into the cold light, which he slowly came to realize originated from a stainless steel lamp high above.

He didn’t know where he was, or why his mind was so hazy and body entirely numb, but he could remember the sensation of falling, of landing, and then the explosion of pain and the understanding that he was going to die.

Was this death? Bright white light with Wesker standing off to the side, threatening a man wearing scrubs with a handgun?

“I’m glad we have an understanding,” he was saying, smiling with bloody teeth. The man cowered, as did most of the other people in the room. All of them, he noticed, were wearing scrubs as well.

Wesker holstered his gun, his eyes straying over to Chris, who could only stare back, unblinking. They locked gazes, Wesker’s expression vaguely changing into something Chris might’ve called ‘concern’ had it been on anyone else.

Stalking across the room and pausing only to pick up a syringe off of one of the stainless steel trays sitting out, Wesker stopped directly beside him, his bare fingers ghosting over his face.

“Don’t worry, Christopher,” he said, the soothing words sounding strange coming from him. “You’re going to be fine.”

This was an operating room, he finally realized, the haze clearing enough for him to at least come to that small understanding. He was in the middle of surgery, and Wesker was here.

Why was Wesker here, and not Jill?

But he didn’t have enough time to wonder about it, because Wesker slid the needle into his neck and injected him with something that made his eyes close almost immediately, his mind wandering back off into an inky black darkness.

This time, he didn’t dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title comes from the song "Acceptance" off the Silent Hill: Shattered Memories soundtrack. I think back when I wrote this SH: Downpour had just been announced and I was super pumped.
> 
> Oh, poor angsty Claire. I actually can write her without the excessive angst, just not in this AU, it seems.


	4. Like a Play of My Obsessions

His Chris’s insides were very ugly.

Illuminated by florescent light, they glinted with a wet shine, deep reds and off-whites and sickly yellows blending together to form blood and bone and tissue. Nothing was where it should be, all of it swollen and dislocated from the trauma, as though the collision had ripped everything out of place and twisted it around underneath his skin.

Inflamed, bloated, torn, hideous, _human_.

Wesker’s insides may have looked like that for several seconds after he hit the ground. But it had not killed him, or even caused him any great deal of pain, before it had begun to heal.

His body had instantaneously done what a team of doctors and surgeons and specialists had been struggling for hours to achieve for Chris. He hadn’t needed any medical treatment, no drugs or scalpels or stitches.

Because even though he had organs and blood, bones that could break and tissues that could be damaged and swollen and ripped ragged, he was not human.

Eight years ago, he had destroyed his humanity in the ten seconds it had taken to put the needle to his arm and inject the virus into his blood. The blinding agony of the Tyrant’s claws through his abdomen had sealed his fate, ripping away everything he once was and recreating him as something different, _better_.

He had died that day, to the sound of Chris’s horrified shouts and the warmth of his own infected blood seeping out of him and down his front. Gunshots and pounding footsteps had accompanied him as his vision blurred and faded, bile welling up in his throat as his heart struggled to beat, his lungs drawing in less and less oxygen with each labored breath he took.

It had been a horrible death, but a necessary one, simply a component of something larger: a birth.

He had been reborn on the floor of that laboratory, awakening not as a frail, mortal human but a self-made _god_ , something superior to anyone and anything else alive.

Oswell Spencer, terminally ill Spencer with his oxygen tank and wheelchair and thin, deteriorated body, was _nothing_. He was weak in every way conceivable, unable to withstand disease and forced to hide like a rat to avoid imprisonment. He hadn’t even been capable of controlling Umbrella or preventing its fall, too incompetent and paranoid to do what was needed in the wake of the Mansion Incident.

He was like the filth under Wesker’s shoes. He was not even a fascinating human, such as Chris, and he certainly was not a god.

_Are you saying I was manufactured? Are you saying I . . .?_

Oswell Spencer did not _create_ him, did not force ideas into his head and manipulate him down a path that he blindly followed.

Wesker _ruined_ Spencer. He was the reason that he was hiding alone in his decaying family home, money gone and reputation ruined, a pale shadow of what he once was.

And now Wesker was the reason that Spencer was dead, his sickly body cold and stiff on the polished library floor.

Oswell Spencer was not his creator, not his _master_ ; he was not the human to Spencer’s god, even if what he said about the ‘Wesker Children’ was true.

In retrospect, he thought that perhaps he shouldn’t have killed Spencer as prematurely as he had; he should’ve asked him more questions, dug for more information.

But, there had been an element of time involved that had pushed him to end it quickly.

He had heard something Spencer hadn’t during their discussion: the sound of footsteps outside of the library entrance, which had been rendered useless after he broke the electronic lock.

He had recognized one set of footsteps very well, the pacing and weight distinctive to one person.

Spencer was too filthy to even trade a word with his Christopher, so Wesker ensured that he would never be able to. Then he had waited, oversensitive ears following the sounds Chris and his partner—Valentine, he had guessed correctly—made as they roamed the mansion, then gunshots as they descended into the basement.

He hadn’t imagined that only forty eight or seventy four hours later (he had lost track of time quite awhile ago, and his watch had shattered in the fall) he would he here, staring at the open incision in Chris’s body as the surgeons tried repairing the massive damage.

Some of them occasionally shot him looks, mainly ones of speculation.

_Who is this person to you_ , they asked silently, gazes inevitably lingering on the rusty blood dried on his lips and chin. Some of it was his own, some was Chris’s—he liked the thought of it mixed together, liked imagining his virus tainting Chris’s pure human blood.

“Suction,” the nearest surgeon was saying, sweating glinting faintly on his brow. “More gauze . . .”

The threat Wesker had made was still weighing heavily in his mind. Wesker could tell. In a way, he supposed it distracted him, but in his experience, the promise of death pushed people beyond their limits, their bodies and minds suddenly becoming capable of so much more just out of the will to continue living.

Wesker watched him carefully, eyes following his every movement as his fingers stroked through Chris’s hair, flakes of dried blood falling away and sticking to his fingernails.

The surgeon glanced at him nervously, his eyes bloodshot. Wesker’s lips curled up into another unpleasant smile, practically communicating his thoughts across air.

_If he dies, I’ll kill_ all _of you . . ._

\--

Leon thought Claire should see a psychiatrist, possibly for her own safety. Even for a person suffering with grief, her behavior struck him as being dangerously extreme, abnormal in its sheer intensity.

Leon had lost quite a few people over the years: grandparents, both parents, an aunt, Ada in Raccoon City—but he had never been like this. Claire seemed _unstable_ , her emotions fluctuating and volatile but each as overwhelmingly negative as the next.

She wept and sobbed without stop, tears flowing endlessly from her inflamed red eyes until she was choking and gagging, chest heaving wildly as she struggled for breath. Her entire body shook, gait unsteady as she wandered the house with no destination, pausing occasionally to fall against a wall for support.

Often she shook her head, muttering quiet denials over and over again in an unbroken loop. This would continue until the loud, mournful sobbing began again, forcing her to stop talking.

Occasionally, all of the agitation was enough to make her ill, but the only thing that ever came up was stomach acid. She no longer ate, no matter what dish he put in front of her.

She didn’t bathe, either, or brush her teeth or change her clothes. She even stopped sleeping, only ever drifting off for short, fitful periods once staying awake was simply impossible.

But the worst of it was the anger.

He had been happy to find one day, very suddenly, that Claire had stopped weeping, but that had lasted only until she had lashed out, sending a lamp crashing to the floor in front of her. It had shattered into a thousand pieces on the carpet, electricity sparking as the bulb died.

She’d started screaming then, shrieking about how she hated him, about how she wished he would’ve died in Antarctica, about how she wanted to put her hands around his neck and kill him, watch as he choked and bled and died.

Her rage at Wesker was unfathomable, and it had begun surfacing with increasing frequency. She would have fits of violence, any object within her reach destroyed as she flailed and cried and yelled, emotions hot and fast and vicious.

“Wesker’s dead, Claire,” he told her one day, after she had collapsed beside more broken glass and curled into a fetal position, shoulders shaking.

“No he’s not,” she moaned, voice low and hoarse. “He’s not . . .”

She repeated it over and over, her newest mantra, as she rolled onto her back and let her arms fall to her sides, eyes staring blankly at the ceiling.

For the first time, Leon actually felt pity for her. Not sympathy, not empathy, not compassion— _pity_.

“Claire . . . please. You have to try to stop crying. _Please,_ for me.”

But she couldn’t hear him. He didn’t think she was even there with him anymore.

\--

They were going to have a funeral, but there would be no body.

Claire wanted to curl up and die at that fact, that last fucking slap in the face from Wesker. Chris wasn’t just dead but _gone_ , his body washed away to a watery grave. She would never get to see him or touch him, tell him she loved him or bid him a final goodbye.

She wanted him to know that he was _home_ , that he was with his family and that everything was _okay_ now, he was safe, but that was impossible.

He was lost, forever alone underneath the surface of the water, and all she had left of him were pictures.

There were many of them, ranging from childhood to adulthood, old and new. They had collected in boxes in her closet over the years, but only now did she take the time to look at them.

Chris’s smile had been so bright for the first twenty five years, his face lighting up each photograph he was in. He always looked like he was the happiest person in the world, his personality seemingly seeping out of the film and into the viewer.

But then that smile dulled, the lively glint in his eyes dimming.

For the past eight years, he seemed sad, his smile haunted by what he had seen. Even in the most recent picture she had of him and her, at her birthday party three months ago, an aura of melancholy hung around him.

She had been so happy that day, overjoyed that Chris was finally there, after so many continuous missions.

_“I’ll spend more time with you, Claire,”_ he had told her that day. _“I have just a few more missions lined up, and then I’ll spend as much time with you as you want. I promise.”_

Claire collapsed to the ground, back pressed into the wall and photograph against her chest, and threw her hand up over her mouth to stifle a sob.

But what else could she do, except weep?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Creepy, creepy Wesker. Angsty, angsty Claire. :(
> 
>  
> 
> Chapter title is from the song 'All That I'm Living For' by Evanescence.
> 
>  
> 
> Oh, and if you ever wondered if I had a tumblr (which you never did), here it is:
> 
> http://willowoftheriver.tumblr.com/


	5. And Learn To Burn Again

The pitying glances got old, after awhile.

_(Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.)_

She remembered in flashes, sights and scents and sounds, a thousand sensations picked up by her body that had hardly registered at the time. She had been somewhere else, far away, so they had been stored deep in her mind to come back later.

_(Give him, o Lord, your peace and let your eternal light shine upon him.)_

It was raining, a light misting of water over everything. It made the air heavy and the ground wet; her shoes, expensive black pumps she had last worn for her interview with TerraSave, had crushed the grass and sunk into the mud.

The sky was grey.

 _Fitting,_ she had thought, carelessly looking up, and then Jill was giving her _that look_ again and her eyes returned to the ground.

The ground, all swirling browns and greens, green, his favorite color, and god, she just wanted to _wake up_ already, to open her eyes and find she was staring at the ceiling of her bedroom, sweating and panting as she reentered a better reality.

Sometimes, dream was indistinguishable from what was real, lines fading as false memory meshed with true memory.

But Claire couldn't wake up.

_(—as we mourn Chris Redfield, who was taken from us prematurely at only thirty three years of age—)_

Jill and Carlos, Barry and Rebecca, Leon—all of them were looking at her, intermittent glances filled with _sympathy_ , with _pity_ , as if each of them was trying to say, _I understand._

 _How can you possibly understand?_ she wanted to scream, right there, right then, a burst of piercing noise to interrupt the priest preaching about 'God's everlasting mercy' and 'eternal life'.

The liar.

Mercy?

God, if there was one, didn't know the word.

Why else would he allow an abomination like Wesker to live while Chris died?

_(In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.)_

It was wet and grey, and there was a tombstone with 'Christopher Redfield' printed across it. There were eyes, too, so many sets of eyeballs with those _looks_ shining in them, and there was a scent of _death_ in the air, phantom rot conjured up from those ancient memories of Raccoon City and Rockfort Island.

Chris was rotting now, somewhere. She had accepted that.

But Wesker wasn't.

The BSAA's official ruling was that after they hit the water, they either died of injury instantly or lived long enough to drown. It simply wasn't physically possible for either of them to have survived and not been found.

But those experts that had made that ruling, they didn't know Wesker. They hadn't seen him on Rockfort Island, seen how he had _moved_. They hadn't heard Chris's story of what had happened in that lab under the Spencer Mansion.

Claire had brought out his report on it. She had handed it to them, personally, and she had asked them: _if he could survive disembowelment at the hands of a Tyrant, do you think a fall would kill him?_

They ignored her. Now, legally, Albert Wesker was dead. Even Jill, the only other person who knew first hand what he was capable of, seemed to have accepted that as fact.

_(Christopher Redfield, 1973 – 2006. Beloved Brother. Thirty three years was not enough time.)_

Claire was at home now. She'd taken off those expensive pumps and the black dress she'd been forced to buy specifically for the occasion and had spent a long time in the shower, letting the scalding water wash away the imaginary rot clinging to her skin.

Then she had taken a seat in her swivel chair, her legs pulled up underneath her, and had tried to write. TerraSave had offered to give her as much time off as she needed, but she had kept trying to work, grinding out each word of her report with agonizing effort.

It was difficult because suddenly, it all seemed pointless. The bureaucratic bullshit she was forced to deal with everyday as TerraSave tried to get through to politicians and governments that could only care about saving face and protecting reputations and preventing monetary loss.

What good was one more report, one more petition, one more protest, when Wesker was still out there? None of that could stop him.

None of that would bring justice for Chris.

Claire Redfield wasn't particularly . . . vengeful. If she had been, she would've abandoned Sherry Birkin in Raccoon City after finding out who her father was. She would've left Steve Burnside to fall off the heliport for all the times he impeded her escape. She would've thrown Angela Miller to the zombies for daring to become the next Ada.

Claire did not carry grudges deeply; she did not disregard the saying 'forgive and forget'. She was quite willing to find the good in people, to look past their flaws and mistakes to what was underneath.

But she believed that some people, a select few, deserved to die. Sadistic, patricidal Alfred Ashford—he might've been one of them. Brian Irons? Maybe. Frederic Downing? Almost certainly.

When it came to Albert Wesker, however, there was no room for doubt, no 'maybe' or 'almost'. He. Deserved. To. Die.

And she, oh, she wanted to be the one to do it. She wanted her face to be the last thing he saw, for him to _know_ that he was dying because of what he did to Chris.

She wanted to make him feel everything she was feeling.

Hands tingling with the rush the thought of it brought to her, Claire's finger stretched up and pressed down on the backspace key. She watched with unfocused eyes as what few sentences she had been able to type of her report disappeared.

With a deep breath, she replaced it with something new.

_It is with great sadness that I submit my resignation to TerraSave . . ._

_._

A few years ago, one of Jill Valentine's cousins had taken an extended trip abroad, to Western Europe. Through the years, Jill had had reason to visit many of the same countries, but her cousin had been able to enjoy them in a way Jill hadn't been, her travels taking her to famous tourists spots instead of suspected BOW manufacturing plants and Umbrella strongholds.

She'd come back around twenty pounds heavier (something no one had felt obliged to make mention of), engaged to an Italian (something that had broken up a few scant weeks later), and with enough souvenirs for an army. She'd handed the nicest ones out to her immediate family and closest friends before distributing the leftovers among the people who were secondary on her list.

Jill was one of these. She'd gotten a pair of earrings shaped like crosses from Vatican City, a tee-shirt two sizes too big with the phrase 'I (Heart) London' across the front, a mug with a four leaf clover on it from Dublin, and a bottle of La Fee Absinthe from Paris.

"I wouldn't drink it," her cousin had said as she had handed it over. "It's not some psychoactive drug, but it _is_ very strong. Used to be illegal."

Other than the occasional glass of wine if she happened to be eating out, Jill didn't drink very much. She didn't even have a can of beer in her refrigerator, or a bottle of vodka tucked away in a cabinet somewhere.

That was why she didn't immediately think about it when she stepped into the foyer of her apartment, the soles of her shoes thudding dully against the tile floor. The noise seemed very loud to her, echoing in her ears as she stood there, the front door still half open behind her.

Everything was very . . . still.

Quiet like a grave.

Jill had spent a lot of time here with Chris. A lot of it had been work related, in one way or another, but sometimes, when Chris had been in a rare cheerful mood, they'd been able to laugh and enjoy themselves, eat pizza and watch television—forget, momentarily, about the horrors that hung over their heads.

She had so many good memories.

But now, standing there, she felt a flurry of emotions that she had only ever experienced once before, a very long time ago. She had been standing in a foyer, then, too, dressed in a bloodstained S.T.A.R.S. uniform and staring at a dark, sparsely furnished Raccoon City apartment as she tried to come to terms with the fact that her life had just changed forever.

 _Where do I go from here_? was what she had asked herself that morning. _What do I do?_

 _Fight Umbrella_ , had been her answer then. _Never stop, even if it kills you in the end._

Now, eight years later, and things had changed once again. That question was back, and more piercing than ever.

_Where do I go from here?_

_You go to work on Monday,_ was her first thought. _You walk into that office and you meet your new partner, and you smile at him and act like you're happy to be working with him. Life goes on. The fight never ends._

That was the strong part of her, the part that hadn't given up while she was being hunted like an animal in Raccoon City, the part that hadn't allowed her to cry when she woke up in the hospital.

But she couldn't be strong all the time, and this was one of those occasions. Heading into the kitchen and grabbing the bottle of alcohol from the counter where it had sat, untouched as a decoration, in the years since she'd gotten it had barely even been a conscious decision. Then, suddenly, she was on the couch in the living room, taking shots and giving full body shudders as the liquid coursed down her throat.

She was in a haze in what seemed like an instant, jumbled thoughts and images racing through her drunken mind. None of them were very pleasant, but her emotions seemed distant from them, separate.

Wesker had a phantom hand around her throat while, at the same time, she remembered the fall, them getting smaller and smaller until they were specks against the black abyss below.

 _Splat_ , she thought, and wanted to be ill.

She tried not to dwell on the funeral, on the grave with no coffin. Was it better that way, or worse? Would it have been better to have been able to look at him? Face him?

No, because she wasn't sure she would've been able to stand it. Not when he died for her, _because_ of her.

If she hadn't let Wesker grab her, if she had gotten out of his hold, if, if, if . . .

But it was too late for any of that, now. Chris was gone, and Claire looked about ready to follow him, and _nothing_ was okay . . .

"Jill?"

A voice. Familiar. Accented. Carlos's.

What was he doing in her apartment?

"You gave me a key. Remember?"

Had she asked that out loud without hearing herself speak?

"How much of this have you had?" he asked, picking up the bottle.

"Not sure," she muttered, the words coming out slurred.

"Cristo Jesus." Setting the bottle back on the coffee table, he bent down and slid one of his arms across her shoulders. The other went under her knees and then she was being lifted, the room spinning in circles of color like a kaleidoscope.

Luckily, she only dry heaved, and soon, she was being set down onto something soft. The world righted itself, objects remaining blurry but becoming separate from one another.

Carlos's face hovered over her, large in her vision. He was still fresh from the funeral, polished in a way she had rarely ever seen him.

"You're . . . handsome when you're cleaned up," she choked out, her trembling hand reaching up to rest against his cheek. "I . . . never really noticed before."

He smiled wanly, sadly, and rested his own hand over hers. "Did you love Chris?"

"I miss him," she breathed. "I miss him so much. Why did he have to die, Carlos? Why did he have to take him away from me?"

"I'm sorry, Jill," was all he said in reply.

His hand lingered on hers, fingers squeezing before he lowered it back to her chest and turned to the nightstand to switch off the light.

"Sleep now," he soothed, but her eyes were already closed.

.

The extreme mood swings Claire had suffered directly following the news of Chris's death had gone as quickly as they had come, leaving her stable if distant. She didn't cry or rage anymore, but the talkative, smiling woman Leon was so used to had transformed into someone quiet and withdrawn.

The pitifully dark expression on her face during the funeral had tugged at his heart, but he hadn't said anything. Even as they drove home afterwards, Claire staring fixedly down at her lap, eyes unblinking, he had kept quiet. Honestly, he didn't think she would've liked anything he would've said at that moment, no matter how sincere.

After that, their interaction had been at a minimum—monosyllable words and nods and shakes of heads, hand gestures with no eye contact. He had changed his clothes—all the black, combined with the atmosphere, was starting to depress him—and fed the dog, taking him out for a walk around the neighborhood immediately after. There wasn't anything better to do, considering that Claire had retreated off to the bedroom.

By the time he got back, the phone was ringing.

"Murphy! Down!" Leon scolded when the Bloodhound made a lunge for the wall where it was mounted, claws scraping over the paint. "No!"

Tail lowering, Murphy whined low in his throat and trotted off to his water bowl.

Shaking his head, Leon picked the phone up out of its cradle and placed it to his ear. "Kennedy Residence."

"Leon."

Leon wondered if he looked as surprised as he felt at hearing the familiar, high pitched voice on the other end. "Ashley?"

"Yeah."

It had only been two years ago, but the Los Illuminados Incident seemed almost like a bad dream to him now. The time since had largely been spent guarding President Graham, though there was always the occasional outbreak to be dealt with.

He didn't see Ashley very often. She spent most of her time away at college, only ever coming home for breaks and holidays. It had been awhile since he had last spoken to her, and he didn't think she'd ever called him at home before.

"I . . . heard," she said, hesitantly, after the silence had stretched on for too long. "About your . . . brother-in-law."

"Oh," he replied, very eloquently, but he didn't know what else to say. "Yeah. I just—we just—got back from the funeral. About two hours ago."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be," was the automatic response. "It was Wesker's fault. Nobody else's."

"Wesker?" she repeated, the tone of her voice changing, becoming guarded. "The same man who Krauser . . . worked for?"

Leon shut his eyes. "Same."

There was another long, breathless silence. Finally: "He must get around."

"Not anymore."

They hung up not long after, Ashley stumbling over the word 'wife' as she told him to give Claire her condolences.

He promised he would, but didn't even end up seeing her until early the next morning when, as he laid uncomfortably contorted on the family room couch, he sensed her walk by and woke up.

"You could've come to bed, you know," she said. A hand came down to brush his forehead, the pads of her fingers trailing lightly across the skin.

He blinked up at her, but could only see white. Papers, he realized—she was holding a thin stack of papers.

Sitting up, he rubbed at his eyes to clear his vision and frowned when he finally got a good look at her.

She was dressed . . . professionally, in a crisp white blouse and a skirt. Her hair, which had been so neglected over the past days, was washed and pulled back, only a few bangs falling freely around her face.

She was even wearing a small amount of makeup.

"Claire . . .?"

"I'm . . . going to work today, for a few hours. I'll be home by eleven or twelve, I think. What do you want for lunch?"

"It's _Saturday_. You don't work on weekends." _Even under normal circumstances_ , he almost added, but he wasn't sure if he should bring it up.

"I know . . . that might be changing soon, though."

Leon frowned deeply, standing and following her as she made her way into the kitchen and went about putting on a pot of coffee. "What does that mean?" he asked, fighting off a yawn and bracing himself against the table.

Claire didn't answer for a long moment, her hands lowering to rest limply on the countertop next to the papers she had been carrying.

"I'm not planning on _working_ today," she finally said.

Funny, he had never thought of Claire as being cryptic before.

"But you are going to work?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

Her hand slid over and she grasped the papers between her thumb and forefinger. Turning on her heels, she offered them out to him.

He took them and, after blinking more of the blurriness out of his eyes, skimmed over the small text lining the top page.

It took his foggy mind a second to process the words in their entirety.

"You're _resigning_?"

"Yes," she said, matter-of-factly. She turned back around, got a mug out of one of the cabinets, and poured herself a cup.

"But—why? You were just saying how much you loved working for TerraSave!"

"Are you upset?" she asked, with forced mildness.

"I'm concerned. And confused. This is so abrupt."

She didn't reply, only added a copious amount of sugar to her coffee.

"Why?"

"I've felt very . . . powerless, these last few days, Leon. A-all these things have been happening, things that have changed my life forever, and I haven't had control over any of it. Wesker out there, killing my brother—"

"Claire," he cut in. "Please—"

"No." Her voice trembled faintly. "No, I'm not going to cry anymore. I've done enough of that, I think. Wesker wins every time I cry."

"Claire, Wesker is—"

"He's _not_ ," she insisted, sharply. "He's not. Whether he hit the water or the ground—it doesn't make a difference. He got up and limped away, and he's alive out there somewhere."

She turned, slowly, looking over her shoulder at him. Her eyes weren't distant anymore, weren't dead—they glinted with a fierce kind of determination he had only seen once before, during Raccoon City.

"I'm going to find him, Leon. I don't care if it takes me twenty years."

" _What_?"

"I'm resigning from TerraSave to join the BSAA. I know they'll hire me. Being a survivor of Raccoon City is a resume in and of itself."

"And then you're going to what?" he asked, incredulous. "Hunt down Wesker, if that's even possible?"

"Wesker can't help himself. One day, there's going to be an outbreak, or an incident, and he's going to resurface again. I can't be there when the time comes if I'm working for TerraSave."

She finished the coffee and pushed it away, then pulled her resignation letter out of his hands and started through the house in the direction of the foyer.

Mind racing, he followed her, catching up by the front door. His hands snaked out and curled around her shoulders, forcing to her face him.

"You're very upset," he began slowly, choosing his words carefully. "You were very close to Chris, and now he's gone. I understand the anger you must have at Wesker, but you don't know for a fact if he's even still alive. And if he is, he could be anywhere by now. TerraSave makes you happy, Claire. Don't throw it away because of all this, quit when you're not thinking clearly."

"I'm—"

"Take some time off," he continued, his voice softening. "Don't think about any of it for awhile. We'll—we'll start a family. Have a baby. You can move on from this. Chris is dead but you're still alive. He wouldn't want you to—"

"You barely knew him, Leon," she cut in harshly. "How would you know what he would want me to do?"

Her gaze hardening into a glare, she jerked away from him and left without a look back, the door slamming behind her.

Leon stared at it, unconsciously running a hand through his hair, and wondered how things could go so wrong in so short a time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the angst continues.
> 
> I ship Jill/Carlos so hard it isn't even funny, but I've literally *never seen a fic of it*. *sigh*
> 
> There are about 927834896 Silent Hill references scattered throughout here, because when I first wrote this chapter Silent Hill: Downpour had just been announced. Yeah, it was that long ago. And I think I was also going through RE4 on professional for the first time, thus the Ashley cameo.
> 
> Thank you all so very much for your kudos and comments! :)
> 
> Chapter title comes from the song "To Another World" by Kuba.


	6. Here Inside My Quiet Hell

Sometimes, the beep of the electrocardiogram and the rasp of the ventilator made it difficult to think. Wesker wasn't sure how long it had been since he'd last slept, and though he could go longer than most people without it, his brain still required some rest. Without it, he was hyperaware, the world too vivid around him, those damn noises louder than they should be.

But it never crossed his mind to leave the room. He was tethered here, pinned by the sight of Chris on the bed, stark white against the sheets.

He'd never looked so weak before, even as he'd struggled for life immediately after the fall. At least then he'd been breathing on his own.

Now he was barely more than a corpse, just an empty shell with all its most necessary functions provided by machinery. His face was gaunt, cheeks sunken and black bags under his eyes, stitched cuts running over angry red-blue bruises. Three of his limbs were in casts, along with seven of his fingers. Blood seeped through the gauze wound around his forehead and his chest, staining red onto the white in cloudy splotches.

There were tubes everywhere, running into every orifice. Feeding, hydration, breathing, a catheter, IVs for painkillers and other medications. Everything to keep a body functioning, but not enough to heal it.

Surgeries and medicine could only go so far. There was a limit to what could be done, a point at which it was hopeless to go on.

Chris was dying, and not even some of the best surgeons in the world could stop it. Wesker could threaten and bribe and do everything in his power, but nothing could make something happen when it was simply impossible.

So here he was, listening to a slowly fading electrocardiogram and the hiss of a respirator as he watched Chris die.

.

Chris was in a mansion.

He wasn't sure how he got here or where— _which_ —it was ( _Raccoon City—England—Antarctica—Semiramis—Zenobia)_ but it was familiar, his own private hell. He didn't try to leave because he knew the doors would be locked, so he stepped further into the entrance hall, feet muffled against plush red carpet.

Alexia Ashford's mutated body was lying at the base of the stairs, grey-green limbs twitching, and in the back of his mind he knew that she'd be back soon, because they always come back. Another part of him, a whisper in his consciousness, told him that he should be looking for Jill and Wesker— _Wesker_ —because they disappeared, didn't they? And what was that gun doing lying out on the tile floor in the middle of the hall?

He started walking, wandering through gilded, familiar rooms. He passes portraits hanging on the wall, blurry, distorted images of burning cities and women in purple dresses and dead teammates and ships sitting all alone in the middle of the desolate sea. There's a statue of a woman, all smooth, soulless marble lines, and a hallway of fine china and broken windows. Glass doesn't crunch under his feet, but there's blood, so much blood, and _it was from the dogs, wasn't it? Or maybe—_

Phantom notes from a piano drift on the air as he wanders, Moonlight Sonata, and he didn't know if it was Jill or Rebecca or Wesker. He didn't bother trying to check, even though he understood distantly that he was supposed to be looking for them; he knew, somehow, that no one would be at the piano when he got there.

 _Like it's a ghost playing, and Captain Wesker_ is _supposed to be dead, isn't he?_

Dead? No, no, no. Why would he think that? Wesker _can't_ die. ( _Disembowelment-fire-fallfallfall, nothing works.)_

He breathed in salty, wet air drifting in through the broken windows and listened to the slapping of waves against rock ( _was Raccoon City on the ocean?)_ , walked by tiger heads with jeweled eyes and through hallways of mirrors and under ceilings that itched with the need to fall and crush him.

In some rooms there were ants, so many ants, all directionless and dying without their queen. On a balcony he found Forest, collapsed over his grenade launcher, _because you shot him in the head, why did you have to shoot him?_ Kenneth was dead by the dining room, blood dyeing the Oriental rug scarlet, and Alfred Ashford was still in makeup and his ring, collapsed by his sister's incubator.

In a beautiful room of stained glass and colored light, he found Lisa's portrait, an image of her trapped in her suffering and her chains. He understands her so much now, because this place was her prison, too. _You know it better than anyone, even me, don't you, Lisa? We're here together._

Some part of him wanted to tell her that it was going to be okay, that they'd find a way out, but he couldn't do that because he knew that they would never be able to leave.

So he walked. On and on, hallway after hallway, through blood strewn across what had once been beautiful. The furnishings and the architecture couldn't begin to convey the evil lurking just below the surface, but Chris can sense it anyway, like the death has seeped into the foundation.

The building is drowning in its own horror, and he can't get away from it.

.

The florescent lights buzzed overhead, better than the respirator but still too loud. He held one of the vials of blood up to it and blinked several times as the yellow-white light began blurring at the edges, fading into the scarlet.

The world was too bright, crystal clear in a way it shouldn't be even with his enhanced vision, and distantly, he wondered how long it had been since he had his last injection. His viral load was undoubtedly rising, threatening to overwhelm his body and begin the process of mutation.

That possibility always existed, lurking in the back of his mind, an endless cycle of what-ifs and worst case scenarios, but it was a small price to pay for bringing him back from the dead.

He still remembered the instant before it happened, when the Tyrant's eyes snapped open and it's arm began moving and he was truly staring death in the face. There had been a twinge of fear, a moment of doubt, an inability to have blind faith in what Birkin had given him in that vial, because he hadn't known _what_ it was.

He'd first assumed a form of the G-Virus, given the man's obsession with it, but analyzing his blood afterward had proven inconclusive. It was something entirely new, something he didn't even have a name for, and he had no idea as to its origins.

Before Spencer told him, of course. Birkin had been so desperate to complete work on his precious little G-Virus he'd been willing to pass along what Spencer gave him with no questions asked. If he liked the girl less, he'd turn Sherry into his next test subject to repay the favor.

Unfortunately, however, Spencer hadn't mentioned where the Virus came from in the first place. Wesker knew it had to have derived from Progenitor, but there was nothing he could do with the Sonnentreppe to replicate it.

Which was what led to him here, now, staring at the too-vivid blood and thinking as quickly as his brain could, tracing methods and formulas and forming a hypothesis.

It would take extensive pharmacogenomics and time, possibly more than they had, but he believed there may be . . . another recourse.

.

The Mansion was creeping into his bones, strangling him from the inside. The fear was thick and rolling, his stomach clenching sickly, and he thought that if he listened closely enough, just beyond the Sonata he could hear shrieks, the cries of victims long dead. Lisa was among the cacophony, wailing for her mother as her chains rattled against the floor, getting closer.

Chris ran. He ran down hallways that seemed too long, past broken windows with nothing but blackness below them, through rooms with portraits and statues that shout accusations at him with familiar voices.

— _try harder to save me from the dogs—_

— _shot me in the head—_

— _sacrificed myself for you—_

— _stop Wesker from shooting me—_

— _been so blind about him more of us might have—_

— _were you when I needed you—_

— _got myself involved in this because of you—_

— _Why are you still alive when so many others are dead? Why? Why? Why? Why?—_

He ran until his feet were unable to keep up with the pace anymore. An ankle buckled and a toe caught on the floor, and then he was falling, slamming into the wooden edge of each step until he hit the ground at the bottom.

_(—sudden stop, pain, pain everywhere—)_

He lay there, stunned, listening to the Mansion's voices as they howled. Lisa was still screaming, _mothermothermothermother_ , and it was _everywhere_ , bearing down on him, ready to consume him, and he was ready to just _let it_.

Until he saw the door.

It was only a few feet away, carved cherry wood ringing familiar and bringing with it a feeling of safeness, distant memories of scarce moments of respite.

He dug his nails into the floor and dragged himself there, only stumbling to his feet to grasp the handle and pull down. It gave, opening enough for him to slip in, and he slammed it behind him and fell back against it.

The silence was deafening and wonderful, almost beautiful. He had found a haven, a room with warm yellow light and rows of shelves lined with bottles, medicine and serum ( _most of the medical supplies here are from umbrella)_ and even a little bed against the far wall.

For some reason, he was expecting Richard to be lying there, almost dead.

Instead, Wesker sits on the edge, beckoning him with a finger and a smirk.

He went to him without words, afraid to break the silence, feeling no need to—Wesker was here now and that meant everything was going to be okay. There was no safer place.

They kissed, hands threading into hair and ripping at clothes, fumbling with the buckles to Kevlar vests and holsters. Wesker attacked his mouth, biting his lips, giving him no space to breathe, and suddenly flipped them. Chris's head hit the thin pillow as his weight made the cheap frame creak, Wesker sliding over him and pinning his shoulders with the palms of his hands.

Chris raked his fingernails down his back, tearing at blue fabric as the skin of his neck was nipped and licked. It descended lower, moist heat teasing his nipples and finally settling over his crotch.

Deft fingers popped the button and pulled down the zipper, and then he was being stroked, his back arching involuntarily as it continued, on and on, until he was near to the edge. Only then did the fingers stop and go searching, down and back until they pressed in.

Chris writhed as his prostate was hit again and again, first by one finger, then two and three, and finally, _finally_ he was inside and it was so good, like the only sanity in the midst of the madness.

Wesker was here. They were together. Everything was okay.

.

Unlike James Marcus and Oswell Spencer, Edward Ashford had never had tunnel vision when it came to the Progenitor Virus. Where his colleagues only saw a potential bioweapon, he saw something with infinite potential applications. One of these, he'd hypothesized, could be medicinal.

It seemed almost laughable, given the number of deaths it had caused, but there actually was some merit to it. Progenitor—or, more specifically, its descendant, T—possessed amazing cell regeneration ability. In an uncontrolled infection, it always targeted the brain cells, thus why infected creatures failed to stay dead after succumbing.

Control the infection carefully, however, and it was plausible to think that the regeneration could be aimed at other parts of the host, thus allowing someone to recover from almost anything.

Such as a fall.

Manipulating a sample of the virus into agreeing with Chris's genotype enough that it wouldn't prove fatal within a few hours or a day was extremely difficult, but possible. Umbrella had proved that more than once, though unless someone was born with compatibility (like Vladimir), death was inevitable.

Unless, of course, the cure was administered in time. There were several of them that had been developed back in Raccoon City, and Wesker had chosen the most effective one, with the smallest failure rate. It currently sat in its vial on the nightstand next to Chris's bed.

Wesker held the virus itself in a syringe, poised over a vein in Chris's arm.

He knew, logically, that this had very little chance of succeeding. The odds of the virus regenerating the cells he needed it to were virtually zero, despite all the effort he was going to put into nudging it in the right direction, and in all probability he would either end up having to administer the antidote and let him die of his injuries or let the virus take it's toll and shoot him in the head before he reanimated.

But he still had to try.

The needle slipped into the vein, and Wesker emptied the syringe.

.

At first, Chris was too caught up in the pleasure to notice the hands around his throat. It was only when they began tightening, fingers caging him in as thumbs pressed down onto his trachea, that his eyes snapped open.

"Wesker," he rasped, reaching up to claw, his nails digging into his own skin as he tried to get his fingers under the other man's. "Wesker, what are you doing?"

Around him, in his peripheral vision, he noticed that the room they were in didn't look so inviting anymore. The walls began cracking, the wood floor rotting, the medicine falling from the shelves and shattering. The warm light turned cold and harsh and blinding, and now he could hear the shrieks again, louder than they ever had been.

He writhed, kicking and bucking, struggling to draw in oxygen, but he didn't feel right anymore, something was wrong—his blood, it was like his blood was crawling in his veins instead of flowing, whispering to him with a mind of it's own.

He was hungry. He just didn't know what for.

"Wesker!" he pleaded. "Please!"

But Wesker just looked down at him with burning red eyes and smiled. "Hush. Relax. Let it happen. It's just like sinking into a warm bath . . ."

And Chris screamed and screamed and screamed—

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title comes from the song 'Invisible' by Skylar Grey.
> 
> And if you can find the Red Dragon reference, I'll love you forever. :)
> 
> Thanks for the kudos!!
> 
> Anna


	7. The Slow Dying Flower (sweet turning sour)

Sherry Birkin would never go to college. She could only imagine what her parents would've thought about that, but given the situation she'd found herself in, it was better to be safe than sorry. Enrolling under a false identity wouldn't necessarily be enough, given the reach of some of the people she wanted to avoid.

Eight years ago, before the ruins of Raccoon City were even done smoking, the question of who would be given custody of her was already being hotly debated. They'd ripped her away from Leon as soon as they'd reached quarantine, and as much as Sherry might've wished that Claire had still been there— _because she wouldn't have just given her up without a fight, would she?_ —she was gone, off to look for her brother. He was the reason she'd come to Raccoon City in the first place, and in the end, Sherry hadn't been enough to keep her there.

Neither William nor Annette Birkin had any close relatives still living, and while they had specified a godfather, Albert Wesker was apparently dead, too. Sherry hadn't been aware of that, and though she and Wesker had never been particularly close, he'd been a presence in her life since she was born, another familiar thing that was never going to be there again. Another thing to mourn.

With no one to challenge them, the US Government had free reign over her—which, to them, meant unlimited access to the remnants of the G-Virus in her blood and a chance to study the effects it would have on her. The months she was a ward of the State were spent in laboratories, being poked and prodded and examined under bright lights by scientists who seemed to have forgotten there was anything more to her than her blood.

In a way, she'd been thrilled when Derek Simmons came along. Being his ward wouldn't mean an end to the tests, she was sure, but at least she'd have _someone_ who might watch over her, who might make it stop when it was all too much.

On the other hand, she'd been suspicious. Something about him made her vaguely uneasy, even though she couldn't figure out why, and he was so nice to her, so generous for no reason. For all the faith Claire had given her in humanity, what she'd seen in Raccoon City had driven home just how rare a person like her was and she wasn't sure that Simmons was one of them. He worked for the government, after all, and wouldn't it be an advantage for him to have personal control over the girl they wanted to study so badly?

Sherry still hadn't been sure about him when he'd walked into the lab one day with a woman on his arm—a woman that she recognized. The one from Raccoon City, with the red dress.

She'd smiled at her, the expression radiant on her beautiful face, and leaned down as soon as Simmons wasn't looking.

"Leave your window unlocked tonight," she whispered.

Sherry had no reason to trust her, even less than she did Simmons. There were a lot of people who wanted her blood, bad people who would hurt her in much worse ways than the government was. That might've seemed convenient, coming from the people who already had her, but Sherry had already seen what Umbrella was capable of, had _lived_ it. She didn't doubt what some people would do to her.

Yet somehow . . . the woman in the red dress never made her think about any of those things. She just obeyed.

By the next morning, she and Ada Wong were halfway across the world at Organization headquarters, and she was in the custody of a very alive Wesker.

Life with him wasn't always easy, but she didn't mind. There were still visits to the lab, of course—there would _always_ be visits to the lab—but he didn't let her stagnate. He and Ada instructed her so that one day she could work in the field, like them, and though that didn't leave much time for school, she had some private tutors. Wesker said she had a brilliant mind, that it would be a pity to waste it.

When Ada had betrayed them in Spain (and oh, God, how that had hurt), Sherry had thrown herself more fully into the academic side of her life. She might not be able to go to college thanks to the Family and the US Government, but she learned through experience from Wesker and the other scientists and she was proud to say that she was getting to be a reasonably capable scientist.

Capable enough, even, that Wesker had left The Patient in her care when he went to go pass out somewhere for a little while.

Sherry didn't know who The Patient was, but he was important somehow—thus the capital letters. He was on life support, with so many injuries that it took her a while to finish reading the list on his medical chart. What caused them—a fall, maybe, or a car accident—was less mysterious than who he was and how Wesker had come by him. He'd gone off following intel on Oswell Spencer's possible location and had come back a little while later with The Patient, who was already being worked on by a team of surgeons.

Did he have some connection with Spencer? (Had Wesker actually _found_ the son of a bitch, after all this time?) Or was he something else entirely?

Why, exactly, did he warrant concern?

Oh, Wesker wasn't _obvious_ about showing it, but Sherry knew him—knew how to read him. It was a quiet undertone, apparent in the little twitches of his fingers at his side and the focus of his eyes. This man had value, and it wasn't just professional—there was _personal_ investment there.

He was determined to keep him alive, even though it really would've been more merciful to pull the plug. Even with all the painkillers, he was so badly mangled that it must've still hurt, and what Wesker had turned to in an attempt to bring him back from the brink was—well, she'd been horrified when he'd briefed her about it.

Yes, she'd read Ashford and his hypotheses, but she didn't agree with them. There was no denying Progenitor and its derivatives had amazing regenerative properties—she was living proof of that—but in light of what they could create, she didn't think it was worth the risk.

Wesker apparently did, though. Some of his notes became hard to follow after a while, probably from lack of sleep, but she got the gist of how he was attempting to manipulate and focus the cell regeneration. And she had to admit that The Patient's heartbeat was just slightly stronger than it had been yesterday, though that was tempered by the slow stirrings of a fever and a small patch of rash on his arm. If he was awake, he'd be itching and nauseous and his thoughts would probably be going a bit vague and unorganized.

( _Not worth it,_ she thought. _If she was in his position—not that she ever_ could _be, as it was—she would rather die than face becoming one of . . . them.)_

"Signs of improvement?" Wesker asked, and she jumped. God, the man could move quietly when he wanted to.

She glanced over her shoulder at him. It hadn't been all that long since he'd left, but he was back to being as perfectly groomed as usual and looked rested. He wore a lab coat over a black dress shirt.

"Slightly stronger pulse," she said. "But I mean minute."

He nodded, his expression inscrutable as he looked down at the man.

Sherry fidgeted with the edge of the medical chart she held, warring with her curiosity. Finally, she decided that if Wesker was willing to leave The Patient in her care, he should be willing to share some relevant information.

"What happened to him?"

He was silent for a beat. "We fell from a window in Spencer's mansion."

She inhaled sharply. "Did you find Spencer?"

"Yes."

"Did you . . .?"

"Yes."

_Did he suffer?_ The question was on the tip of her tongue. _Did you make him suffer, like my father suffered for a week?_ But she didn't ask. She knew there was nothing Wesker could've possibly done to him to equal what he'd inflicted on so many others.

"Why was this guy there?" she asked instead. "Who is he?"

"His name is Chris Redfield."

Sherry's head jerked down, eyes wide as they landed on the man. Chris Redfield? _The_ Chris Redfield? Claire's brother, who she'd been so determined to find? But—

"You've met his sister," said Wesker when he saw her reaction.

"Why did you save him?" she forced out, stunned. She'd never really expected to meet Chris, and certainly not like this.

Wesker tilted his head, considering. "I used to know him," he finally said.

That didn't explain anything at all. It made sense—she'd known there was something personal about this—but Wesker wouldn't go to any lengths for anyone unless they were useful to him in some way. Was he intending to use him against Claire somehow? Was Claire even a problem for him?

Or was he implying that he saved him out of some sort of . . . sentiment? _I used to know him_ —was he saying they were friends, or something? But Claire Redfield's brother, friends with someone like Wesker?

She could feel him watching her out of the corner of his eye. "It was in Raccoon City," he said.

And as if he didn't know that _that_ would shut her down immediately. There was very little she hated thinking about or discussing more than that place.

She turned away from him and sat down in the chair beside Chris's bed. Wesker moved too, milling around the room to check the readouts of the machinery and prepare the drugs to be injected into his IV.

She made a point of not looking at him. For a while, her eyes lingered on Chris's hand, bruises on the back and casts on the fingers. Then they traveled up over the cast on his arm and the rash poking out at the top to rest on his mottled face.

She tried to look past the injures for similarities to Claire, but she found, to her grief, that she couldn't really remember what she looked like very well any more. Reddish-brown hair—were her eyes blue? She was pretty, but the details . . . they were vague, like a mist had rolled over them.

Maybe she could ask Chris, if he ever woke up.

.

When Jill had walked into work that Monday after the funeral, still slightly ill despite Carlos's best attempts to nurse her through the hangover, she'd honestly expected that her new partner would be Parker Luciani.

No one could ever replace Chris, but she liked Parker—he'd had her back on the Zenobia and he was easy to get along with, though she wasn't quite sure she would be able to stomach the frequency with which he'd started talking about Raymond Vester in glowing terms. It wasn't that she wasn't glad for him to have found someone, but considering the state of her own life, it was just a bit . . . difficult to face someone else's happiness.

Still, it could be worse. It could be Quint Cetcham, who was a genius and a good agent but got grating after a while ("a while" being a few minutes) or some scheming bitch with an ulterior motive in the same vein as Jessica Sherawat.

No, compared to them, Parker was great.

Only, when she got to her office, he hadn't been there. Instead, there were two people she never would've expected.

"—a G mutation with no prior experience, I doubt you'll have to do much to get yourself back into the swing of things," Clive O'Brian was saying to Claire Redfield, who was sitting behind what had been Chris's desk with a small, uncertain smile on her face. It didn't reach her eyes.

"I hope so, though Harvardville kind of made it apparent I was out of practice . . ." She trailed off upon noticing Jill, and O'Brian turned around to greet her.

"Hello, Jill," he said warmly, and she made an effort to smile back. The incident with Lansdale notwithstanding, she'd always liked O'Brian, and she hadn't seen him for a year before he came into town for the funeral.

"O'Brian," she acknowledged, shooting him a questioning glance. "I didn't know you were still here."

"Ah, yeah. I've been milling around HQ over the weekend. Brings back good memories. My flight leaves in—" He checked his watch and cringed. "—but I thought I'd stop in and talk to Agent Redfield. I've heard a lot about her."

" _Agent_ Redfield?" Jill repeated incredulously. _Claire_? The woman had been working for TerraSave two days ago, hadn't she?

"I'm your new partner, Jill," she said, briefly darting sad eyes to Chris's former desk. "Or, I will be soon, at any rate."

"But—I thought you were happy at TerraSave." That's what Chris had said, the last time he'd mentioned her.

"I decided I wanted to take a more . . . active role. Like Chris. So I resigned and applied here. They were happy to have me. And since my resignation was active immediately, I officially start as soon as the paperwork's done."

"Chris would be very proud," O'Brian said solemnly, bowing his head. "He was a good man and a fine agent. The world was . . . a much better place with him in it."

Claire sniffled, her eyes suddenly a bit damp. "Thank you."

But Jill—no, Jill didn't think that Chris would be proud. More like _horrified_. One of his main priorities had been keeping Claire safe, his failure to do so in 1998 still rankling him until the end. And being a BSAA Field Agent was, by definition, extremely dangerous—certainly nothing he would've wanted for her.

She missed him so much in that moment. It was like he'd been the only thing keeping her world familiar, and now that he was gone everything was coming apart at the edges and reforming into something that shouldn't be.

But she had sworn to herself after the funeral that she would do what was necessary—that she would greet her new partner and pretend she was happy to be working with them. No matter what she thought Chris would say, it was Claire's decision, her way of coping, and it wasn't Jill's place to question that.

So she smiled, tried to mean it, and said, "Welcome to the BSAA."

And Claire would go on to prove herself a competent partner. She was almost frighteningly efficient at times, going about her work like a woman possessed. There was a loathing in her, just under her skin, and it drove her on, kept her focused. She'd been hurt and now she wanted someone to feel it.

Jill had first thought Claire was lashing out at bioterrorism as a whole. She knew that anger, that desire to destroy the thing that had damaged the course of your life beyond all recognition. It was never something she would've chosen, but after all that had happened, it gave her purpose. With every scientist or terrorist she stopped, she wrenched back just a little more of what had been ripped away from her that night in Raccoon Forest.

Only Claire, as she would come to realize, hadn't joined the BSAA to try to fix herself. She might've accepted the reality of Chris's death but there was no _coping_ , not for her—just a festering wound sitting heavy in her mind, possessing her with an idea.

She was convinced Wesker was still alive, and she wanted revenge.

"Do you think he _could_ still be alive?" Carlos asked her, a little while into the partnership. He'd become a fixture in her apartment as of late, sitting on her couch drinking beer and listening patiently to whatever she had to say, no matter what it was.

Jill ran her hands over her face and thought about what she'd seen that night in Spencer's library—and even more so, about what Chris had told her _he'd_ seen.

Disembowelment, he'd called it. Tyrant's claws straight through the stomach and out the other side, blood everywhere, so much blood. And then in Antarctica there'd been steel rebar and fire and yet somehow, none of it took.

A fall seemed so paltry in comparison to all of that, but God, Jill wanted him to be dead. She wanted it so bad she could taste it, wanted to believe it so fully that she didn't have to be afraid deep in her heart that one day, he'd come back and all the pain of healing wouldn't have been worth anything.

"I want Chris's death to have meant something," she whispered, and it wasn't an answer at all but Carlos seemed to understand, if not agree.

"It did mean something," he insisted. "He saved your life."

She laughed derisively. "You know, sometimes Claire looks at me and I wonder if she's thinking, _it should've been you_. And it should've been. I don't have anyone to leave behind, not really."

And oh, Chris had been so damaged for those past eight years, too strong to ever give up but fractured deep in his core. Wesker had devastated him and he'd never really put himself back together correctly. He'd thought Jill hadn't known and she wished she didn't, but she was too close not to see the truth right in front of her face.

Maybe that was what had driven his choice that night, some sense of responsibility or a want of closure. But maybe he hadn't realized that for all that he cut himself off from any support, they all leaned on _him_. Now there was nothing, especially for Claire.

"That's not true," Carlos insisted, surprisingly vehement. "Don't talk that way."

"My parents are dead, I don't have any siblings—"

"You have _me_."

Jill stopped short, her argument completely gone. Carlos's searching eyes found her own.

"You'd leave me behind," he finally continued, voice a quiet murmur.

Then he leaned in and kissed her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've shamefully been away from the RE fandom for a while, though now the hd Remake has thankfully brought me back. The nostalgia literally made me cry. I think I have a problem.
> 
> So I think the thing I hated most about RE6 was where Sherry ended up after Raccoon City. I feel like there could've been so much interesting potential but they just invent a new character that she's supposedly been with all along?
> 
> And as I think I've mentioned before, I ship Jill/Carlos with the scorching heat of a thousand burning suns.
> 
> Chapter title comes from My Skin by Natalie Merchant.
> 
> Thanks for all the kudos and comments! :)
> 
> Now excuse me, I have to go prostitute myself to be able to afford the replica Mansion keys now available on Ebay.


End file.
